ABSTRACT
Intuition, spontaneity, creativity, imagination: all of these terms are associated with literary authorship, and all imply high approval. Literary translators, however, are sometimes praised but may also be criticized for displaying the very same qualities in their work. Multiple voice translation (MVT) may be subject to even more disapproval, as if the single, individual translator’s voice must, almost by definition, be the sole source of these prized qualities, while interventions by such others as editors or publishers may negate or destroy them. In this paper, I argue that MVTs can indeed delight readers of modern Chinese literary translation with an abundance of intuition, spontaneity, creativity and imagination. Among the topics raised in this paper are author and translator collaboration; editors’ and publishers’ relationships (by written or unwritten rules and regulations as well as active intervention); team translation e.g. in institutions such as Beijing’s Foreign Languages Press; two or more translators translating a multiple authorship text (e.g. letter exchanges); official national guidelines; and educational translation (e.g. collaboration in the supervisor-student relationship). Multiple partnerships may include native speakers of each of the two languages, with knowledge of both at expert or rudimentary levels or of only one of the two languages at either level; and translators with special areas of expertise e.g. literature and history. It has been claimed that all published writing, literary or not, translated or not, is a product of multiple voices. Not just modern Chinese-English translation but literary translation across the world will surely be able to supply more such examples.
